Notes: The paper and highlighter pens are canon, as are a few other elements (and a couple of direct quotes) that come up in this chapter. Also, reference is made to another minor Being Human character (and I've just realized I'm not sure how that character fits into Annie's timeline, so I've made up some context for her.)
Okay, this chapter is taking us back toward the track, if not exactly as far as I intended. I was a little distracted by the Brazilian Grand Prix and the Grey Cup while trying to finish the chapter, so I'm just letting it unfold as it will.
Warnings: Sorry, folks, we're not getting back to Scamp in this chapter.
Chapter Eleven
Annie decided that her plans for haunting Owen should be laid without delay. Accordingly- and this element seemed to be very important to her- she hunted through a drawer and found a pad of paper and a handful of brightly-coloured highlighter pens, in addition to an ordinary one. Loki ceded the armchair, and Annie curled up in it, with the paper propped on her knee and the pens fanned out before her on the coffee table.
"All right," she said determinedly. "If I'm going to haunt Owen, I have to work out a proper plan of attack. What should I do first?"
"Find out where he lives," Mitchell, the once-hunter, called from the kitchen where he was washing up his breakfast dishes.
"That seems a reasonable first step," Loki agreed, lifting Elizabeth, who seemed inclined to stalk the highlighter pens, from the coffee table and placing her in his lap.
"Good idea," Annie agreed, and wrote something on the paper with the plain blue pen. She looked up, doubtful. "How will I go about doing that?"
"Does he have friends or family in Bristol?" Loki asked. If Annie was determined to haunt Owen, well, Loki would help her in any way he could. "Since he chooses not to return to this house to live, he may have found another abode, or he may be staying with someone he knows in the city."
Annie sat up straight, eyes striking fire. "Janey Harris!"
A book- a heavy volume of naval history, borrowed by Loki from the library- flew off the book case near the door. Mitchell, who had just appeared in the doorway, ducked back into the kitchen. Elizabeth and Philip watched the flight with interest. Loki hastily bespelled the book back to its place, and then prompted,
"Who is Janey Harris?"
"She always fancied him," Annie said, rather obscurely. "And believe me, if she knew when I died she'd have been here before the ambulance crew."
"Do you by any chance know where she lives?" Loki asked. Annie avoided his eyes and made another note. There was a faint ripping sound, as the nib of her pen scored through the paper. The rest of the pens rose from the coffee table, and Loki cast another quick spell to stop them flying about the room like tiny missiles. The kittens looked disappointed, and Mitchell emerged from the kitchen carrying a tea-tray in front of himself like a shield.
"Really, Annie, you've got to learn to control that," he complained. Annie shot a glare at him as the radio came on, loudly and not quite tuned to a BBC news program. Mitchell, still hiding behind the tea-tray, hastily crossed the lounge to turn down the volume. He then bent an accusing glance at Loki. "I thought you were going to work on it."
"Well, you know how it is when I plan anything," Loki shrugged. "You never know what will happen: one minute I am trying to disrupt my brother's coronation, and the next thing you know I am mopping floors here in Bristol." He stopped, as startled as his friends suddenly looked: he was quite sure that was the first time he had managed to joke about the circumstances that had led to his arrival in this realm.
Annie glanced from Loki to Mitchell, seemed to decide Loki was not quite ready to follow up on his little jest, and assured Mitchell, "I'll work on them, I promise. I just want to think about this bit first."
"I think you should think about the bit that involves the rest of us getting smacked in the head with flying objects," Mitchell grumbled. Another book, this one a slender paperback, flew through the air, ruffling Mitchell's hair on its way by. Mitchell slapped irritably at it. "See?"
"I beg your pardon, that was me," Loki murmured, the picture of innocence. He waved his hand and returned the book to the shelf. Mitchell shook the tea-tray at him. Loki smirked, and pointedly turned back to Annie to repeat his question. "Do you know where this Janey Harris dwells?"
Annie shook her head. "No. We knew her in London, before we came here. And then she sort of disappeared, she didn't come around us for a while, and when we arrived in Bristol, here she was. I didn't know she was coming to Bristol, too. " The three friends looked at each other. Loki assumed they were all thinking the same thing: what were the chances this Janey Harris's arrival in Bristol had nothing to do with Owen?
Slim.
Annie looked rather forlornly down at her pad of paper. "Apparently, I don't know very much at all."
"Never mind," Loki said reassuringly. "It is of no import, because Owen has promised that he will repair the hot water heater for us. He will have to let us know when he intends to enter the house, yes?" He glanced at Mitchell, who nodded confirmation of this point of etiquette. "Well, then: I will simply ensure I am here when he comes, and then follow him to his place of residence afterward. You see? Simplicity itself."
"As long as you don't get caught," Mitchell warned. "I don't think either the school or the Avengers would look very kindly on you getting arrested for stalking someone."
Annie looked alarmed, but Loki waved the concern away. "Do not be ridiculous. Obviously, I will use a glamour, or else take on the form of something inconspicuous, such as a starling. As to the Avengers, do you really think any of them would censure me, if they knew the circumstances? Tony Stark, perhaps? Agent Coulson? I am sure even Steve Rogers would direct reproachful looks at Owen, if we explained the circumstances to him."
"I suspect he'd do a lot worse than that," Mitchell admitted. "And I frankly would pay good money to see the Black Widow's reaction. Or Fury's. Still. Be careful."
"Yes, yes, of course," Loki recited, rolling his eyes for Annie's benefit, and was gratified when she giggled.
"Christ, when did I become the sensible one?" Mitchell groaned, dropping onto the end of the sofa opposite Loki and scooping both kittens into his lap.
Loki smirked again. "Well, in George's temporary absence, one of us must fill that vital role." He rose to his feet. "Excuse me for a moment, will you? I think I will go upstairs and fetch a pair of socks." Conscious of puzzled looks in his wake, he headed for the stairs.
~oOo~
Annie was as good as her word: having pledged to learn to control her powers, she worked very hard for the next forty-five minutes, which Loki knew from experience was a long time indeed for a novice to concentrate as hard as she was doing. The task Loki assigned her was to move a ball of rolled-up socks from Loki's hands to her own, and then transport them back.
This was not without its difficulties: at first, she was unable to identify the tell-tale sensations of her powers working, and was forced to examine her feelings about Owen in more detail than any of the three friends was happy making her do. This resulted in more flying books, another outburst from the radio, and the kittens finally decamping upstairs.
Even when she managed to isolate the specific feeling that accompanied action on the objects, Annie continued to find it very difficult to control.
"I'm sorry!" she exclaimed yet again, over a rumble of distant thunder outside, as the socks flew up and struck Loki in the face for at least the fifth time.
"It is of no importance," Loki assured her. "This is why we are using socks, rather than potatoes."
"Or coconuts," Mitchell giggled, and was immediately hit in the head with the socks. "Nice one, Annie," he exclaimed.
"Sorry. Me again," Loki replied, leaning over to retrieve the socks. He re-rolled them more tightly, then held out the sock-ball once again in his open hand. Annie chewed on her lower lip for a moment, then gazed in complete concentration at the ball of socks…
… which slowly rose in the air, then began to make their uncertain but controlled way toward her. Loki forbore to cheer, lest he break her concentration. Mitchell watched in unabashed wonder…
And the front door opened, and George and Nina came through, in animated conversation about the film they had just seen.
Mitchell leaped to his feet as though galvanized, trying to put himself between Nina and the flying object. Loki snatched the socks out of the air, and Annie, though the human could not see her anyway, vanished. George came to a halt in the middle of the lounge, followed closely by Nina, who gazed upon Loki with a curiosity that seemed to overcome even the distaste for him she had previously exhibited.
"What are you doing?" she asked. Loki smiled brightly, tossed the socks in the air and caught them in the same hand.
"I am teaching myself to juggle," he explained, repeating the maneuver. "Someone told me that this was a good technique with which to begin."
"Why are you teaching yourself to juggle?" asked George, who was extremely intelligent but not, as the pigeon incident had made clear, always very quick.
"Why not?" Loki replied, in a tone of manic cheerfulness, which had the predictable effect of making Nina uncomfortable. She glanced at George as though wishing to suggest they remove themselves from the vicinity of his mad housemate. Loki was aware he had done nothing to endear himself to Nina, and probably George would have words for him later, but at least she seemed distracted from thinking about the glimpse she might have seen of the sock-ball floating in midair when she walked in.
At this point, Mitchell did not so much step into the breach as hurl himself bodily into it.
"I don't know about you, but I'm about parched for a cup of tea," he announced. "Nina, would you care for one?" He herded Nina, followed by an puzzled and squeaking George, out of the lounge to the kitchen. Loki was just about to go looking for Annie when someone knocked on the front door.
Well. It was not knocked, so much as pounded. Annie appeared at the top of the stairs and hissed urgently,
"Who is that?" as if Loki could see through doors. He looked up at her with an exaggerated and bewildered shrug-
- And then, in the next minute, he remembered the sound of distant thunder from a few moments ago. Damn.
Casting an anxious glance at the kitchen doorway, Loki hastened- all right, it was more accurate to say he scurried- across the entry hall, and yanked open the front door.
"Broth- !" Thor's cheerful exclamation was cut off when Loki clamped a panicky hand over his mouth.
"Shhh!" he ordered. The part of Thor's face that was visible under Loki's hand wore an expression of puzzlement, but- with what Loki would later recognize as commendable patience- he did not attempt to free himself. Or bite.
"Loki, what in the Nine are you doing?"
Well, of course, there was generally someone available to speak for Thor when he was unable to do so for himself. Loki glanced over his brother's shoulder at the rest of his unexpected guests, then stepped hastily outside, pushing Thor backwards before him. Once on the steps he released his brother and closed the door behind himself.
"Thor, Sif, welcome," he said, and glanced around at the Warriors Three. "Welcome to all of you. Now, for the love of everything, hush!"
Sif raised her eyebrows, and also her voice. "I repeat my question: what in the- "
Loki flapped his hands at her, the sort of gesture that would have looked in character for George. "Shh, I tell you! George has brought home a… a friend. A mortal friend. A female mortal friend- "
"Good for you, George," Fandral murmured, and Volstagg chuckled.
"- And I would very much like not to, to do anything to frighten her off before she has had a chance to fully acquaint herself with George's many wonderful qualities," Loki explained desperately.
And then, of course, Loki remembered that George had not come home the night before, which surely indicated a certain level of acquaintance already, and his unfortunate sense of humour nearly got the better of him. He pinched the bridge of his nose, in an effort to get the impulse toward hysterical giggling under control, and said- almost truthfully-
"It is not that I am not delighted to see all of you, but may I ask the reason for your visit?"
There was, he realized, one obvious reason for them to be here. Thor's face shifted to a look of sternness and concern. Loki glanced past his brother- and saw Fandral's expression suddenly become self-conscious.
Oh.
"I have no plans to kill anyone," Loki snapped, addressing his brother. Although, should he change his mind, he might well begin with Fandral. "What did he tell you?"
"That you were upset, and Annie was upset, and perhaps it would be comforting for you to speak to your brother!" Fandral interrupted, in the harassed voice Loki had heard before. What was different now was the distinct undertone of hurt. "And then the rest of us came along because we wanted Annie to know we were- "
"Concerned about her," Sif spoke up, glaring at Loki.
Loki's mouth opened, and then it closed, and he looked at the disappointment on Thor's face and the weary resignation on those of Fandral, Sif, and Volstagg. Hogun looked as though he could not possibly care less, but that, too, might have been deceptive.
It really was astonishing to Loki, that he could look at them on the same level when he felt about as tall as a particularly chastened mouse.
Loki dragged a hand back through his hair, glanced up and down the street, and remembered the matter of most urgency.
"I apologize. To all of you. Fandral, I am so sorry," he said, rapidly but with all the sincerity he could muster. "Later, when we have a moment, I will invite you to hit me as hard as you can, but for the moment I really must ask you to- " They could not hang about in the street, nothing could possibly be more conspicuous. Loki opened the front door and peeked inside. The others were still in the kitchen. "Come with me, and be very quiet," he ordered in a whisper, grabbed his brother's hand as though they were both in the nursery, and led the way into the house.
It was more than he deserved, but Thor's friends took pains to be as quiet as boots and armour permitted as they followed him up the staircase. Loki had of course cast a small enchantment to render their passage silent, but he still appreciated the obvious effort they made. He ushered the group into his bedchamber- he had almost to wedge Hogun in last, like a man trying to stuff one more article of clothing into the corner of an overloaded suitcase- and pulled the door closed behind them.
He was dashing down the staircase, grateful for his own sock-clad feet, when Annie appeared before him, blocking the bottom of the stairs.
"What have you done with them?" she demanded in a whisper, as though five Aesir warriors were a trifle he might have secreted in his pockets. Loki gestured behind himself. "Upstairs? Where upstairs?"
"In my chamber," Loki whispered back.
"Your- Loki, are you out of your mind? There's hardly room in there for you and me, and I'm a ghost! Why didn't you hide them in my room?" Loki blinked at her: not being in the habit of making himself free in Annie's private quarters, the idea had not occurred to him. Annie pulled a humourously exasperated face. "You'll be lucky if they don't break- "
A muffled crash, rather like the contents of a bookshelf landing on the uncarpeted floor, sounded from the storey above them. Annie frankly rolled her eyes.
"I'll go sort them out," she said. "Just a minute." She vanished, and Loki continued on his way downstairs just as Nina, George, and Mitchell emerged from the kitchen.
"What was that?" Nina asked.
"What was what?" Loki asked, the picture of innocence. Nina opened her mouth, and from upstairs came a muted tramping noise, as if five large Aesir warriors were creeping down the hall in heavy boots.
Well, perhaps it was not so much "as if," really.
"That," Nina said, looking upward in puzzlement.
"Oh, that," Loki replied easily, picking up the socks from the coffee table. He unrolled the pair, re-rolled the individual socks into balls, smiled at Nina and began expertly to juggle them in one hand. "That was the pipes."
"The pipes?" repeated Nina, who looked as though she was uncertain whether to concentrate first on the ridiculousness of the claim, or on the fact Loki suddenly knew how to juggle. This was, more or less, what he had been counting on. However, an agreeable side-effect was the fact Nina now looked as though she wished to study, rather than to disembowel, him. It was entirely possible that disembowelment would later become part of the study, but for the moment he basked in the lack of hostility in her expression. Confusion really was an improvement.
Annie appeared at the foot of the stairs, made an exaggerated thumbs-up sign, and vanished again. Nina half-turned to see what Loki was looking at, and he snatched up the television remote to add to his juggling performance, which had the effect of drawing her attention back to him.
"It is quite an old house," Loki returned to his original lie. "And the pipes are not all they could be. It is very strange how they sound like booted feet, is it not? When first I moved in, I kept imagining there were invisible warriors marching up and down the hallway." He smiled brightly at Nina.
Nina looked as though she would speak. And then she looked as though she was unable to think of anything to say, and instead of wasting any more time on Loki, she turned to George. Her expression made it clear he was a much more attractive prospect: her face softened as she said, "Well, I'll say goodnight, then- " and Loki felt a strange sense of an event already experienced when George, wearing an extremely amusing expression of commingled diffidence and infatuation (not, of course, that Loki was in any way judging him for this) offered,
"I could walk you to your bus if you like- "
There was another thud from upstairs. Loki hastily went back to his juggling, but Nina hardly seemed to notice the noise or the nonsense. She tilted her head back to look at George under her eyelashes, and he looked rather as though he had been struck in the head with Mjolnir as he took her hand and walked out of the house with her.
Loki exhaled and put the socks and television controller back on the coffee table. Annie appeared next to him on the sofa, and Mitchell cast up his hands.
"What's going on upstairs?" he demanded.
"Thor," Loki explained concisely, and rose to his feet. "And his friends. I must fetch them. Annie, might I prevail upon you to make some more tea, please? And perhaps see if there are any of those nice chocolate-covered biscuits left? I have considerable mending of fences to do."
"How can you possibly have fences to mend? You've hardly even seen them recently," Mitchell protested. Loki echoed Mitchell's gesture, casting up his own hands.
"Mitchell, surely you are familiar with the peculiar nature of my talents," he retorted. "I can ruin things faster than most people can eat a biscuit. Excuse me."
Without waiting for a reply, Loki trotted up the stairs. He paused at the top to take a deep breath, wishing he had asked Mitchell to do this part. He did not particularly want to face Thor or his friends, or confess to his latest failure. He had thought he was improving, had thought he was trying, but the moment anything happened to upset his balance he went right back to believing the worst of Fandral and the others. Well, he had earned this latest shame, and there was no avoiding its consequences.
He went down the hall to knock on Annie's door. "Thor? As Tony Stark would say, the coast is clear. May I offer you refreshments and… and we can talk?"
"Of course, brother," Thor rumbled back. The door opened, and there was Thor, with Elizabeth sitting on his shoulder wearing an expression that indicted she was particularly pleased with herself. Thor glanced at the kitten out of the corner of his eye and broke into a warm smile. "We have been acquainting ourselves with your little companions. I believe the other one is at this moment climbing up the back of my cape."
"Little nuisances," Loki murmured fondly, as Thor turned in the doorway. Philip was indeed clinging to Thor's cape, halfway up, his ears laid back and his expression one of maddened determination. Declining to reflect on who that expression reminded him of, Loki reached down to detach the kitten's claws from the heavy red cloth. Philip squirmed in his hands and Loki squashed whatever emotions tried to rise up as he acquiesced to the kitten's obvious wishes and placed him on Thor's shoulder next to his sister.
Elizabeth promptly stretched forward and mewed piteously, until Loki stood close enough to his brother for her to clamber from Thor's shoulder to his own. He reached up to rub her tiny head and was rewarded with her vibrating purr in his ear. He wondered if the kitten could feel his shoulders softening under her.
"Please, come with me," he invited generally, without meeting the eyes of any of Thor's friends, and led the way down to the lounge.
Annie was setting out a plate of the chocolatey biscuits, and she looked up in genuine pleasure at the sight of the guests.
"Annie, it is good to see you again," Thor said, moving forward to embrace her. Loki sidled out of the way as Sif and the Warriors Three followed suit, except for Hogun, who simply nodded at her as if he had never offered to abet a murder in her name. On the other hand, the nod was more than most people received from Hogun.
Thor glanced at Loki, who averted his eyes, and then turned back to gently address Annie. "I understand you have learned something very troubling."
"Please, won't you sit down," Annie said with sudden formality, gesturing toward the available seats. "Mitchell is just putting the kettle on for tea." She smiled, the sort of smile that acknowledges the kindness of an acquaintance rather than accepts comfort from a friend. Loki knew perfectly well the aloofness was on his account, though she had no idea what was wrong. He was torn between gratitude to her for her loyalty, and the guilty awareness that his own stupid suspicions had led to this breach between her and some of her only friends from outside the house.
This could not be permitted to go on. He clenched his hands, and spoke up, forcing himself to look at Fandral and the others.
"A moment ago, Fandral, I invited you to hit me for… for the assumption I made about your intentions. I was in earnest."
"Do not be ridiculous," Fandral grumbled, waving Loki away as he started forward, handing Elizabeth to Annie as he did so. "I have no intention of hitting you."
"I would feel better if you did," Loki pleaded.
Fandral smiled, crookedly and not entirely unkindly. "That is why I will not do it."
Well, that was fair. And probably confirmation that he really had ruined everything, really would have to start over again. Loki scruffed a hand back through his hair, pulling nervously at it, and finally made himself say,
"I really am terribly sorry for my… for the conclusion I came to. I was…I know I can trust you all, and I have been trying to do better, to not, not always assume that you- I have tried, but I failed. I insulted you, and I am sorry. I apologize."
There were more words trembling on his tongue, but all of them were justifications and excuses, nothing that deserved to be heard, so Loki closed his mouth against them.
There was a silence, in which Loki became aware of Fandral's growing discomfort, and of the way Volstagg was glaring at his friend. At length, Fandral sighed and said,
"It really was more enjoyable to torment you in the days when you never admitted fault in anything." Volstagg cuffed Fandral, not very hard, like a bear admonishing its cub. The blond warrior glared at him. "All right, all right! Loki, I wanted to believe you just needed to talk to Thor because it would make you feel better. I wanted not to think you might do something mad again. But you were so frantic when we spoke, the way I remember you were when... So I did not exactly trust you, either, and though I did not tell Thor he might be needed to head off some sort of outburst… I was half-afraid there would be one. You were not entirely wrong, to think I had set Thor on you for that reason. I, too, know we can trust you better than that, and I, too, apologize."
"Oh," Loki mumbled. "Well, um, I accept."
Volstagg looked from one to the other, his bearded face lit up with a smile of approval. "There, now. That was not so hard, was it?" There was a little sheepish mumbling from both sides, and Loki was conscious of a feeling that Volstagg's offspring were fortunate little souls indeed.
Thor, who had been conspicuously quiet during all this, now spoke up equally sternly:
"I confess, brother, to some concern of my own, regarding your intentions in this matter. What are you planning to do?"
Annie offered him the plate of biscuits. "Please, Thor, sit down. It feels really crowded in here."
Thor obeyed, but his expression of concern intensified as he turned back to Loki. "Brother- ?"
"We intend to haunt Owen, and try to impress upon him the wrongness of his actions toward Annie," Loki said flatly. He was not surprised when Thor frowned.
"Loki, that course seems doomed to bring trouble upon yourself," he argued. Mitchell appeared in the kitchen doorway, took stock of the situation, and retreated again. Loki shrugged, a gesture he knew perfectly well was infuriating. Thor let out a sharp exhalation of impatience, obviously reining in his rising exasperation. "You are well-thought-of in this realm, brother. Surely you would not wish to throw that away over this wretched mortal. I know you are angry at what he did to Annie, but you cannot- "
It had been a long while since Thor had so thoroughly got hold of the wrong end of a stick, but he had certainly done so this time. Loki had just started to speak when another voice cut across his, and he fell silent.
"Thor. Stop right there," Annie said, in a tone of command quite unlike her ordinary one. Thor looked at her in surprise, and Annie offered him the plate of biscuits again, the gesture automatic, as though she did not know she was doing it. "None of this is Loki's idea. It's mine."
"Yours?" Thor asked, blankly.
"Yes. Mine. The one who got murdered, remember?" Annie said harshly, and now it was Thor's turn to look ashamed of himself. Loki stepped forward and quietly took the plate of biscuits away from her. Annie went on firmly, "I've asked Loki to help me haunt Owen, and he's agreed because he's a good friend, and I appreciate your concern but none of this has anything to do with you."
Thor looked at Annie, glanced at his brother, and then said quietly, "I am sorry, Annie, that was disrespectful of me. Will you tell us what happened?"
Mitchell appeared from the kitchen, carrying mugs of tea on a tray, and began handing them out as Annie reviewed the encounter with her parents and the memories it had brought to the surface.
"And you truly did not remember any of it until then?" Sif asked, sounding more confused than disbelieving.
Annie made a gesture of frustration. "I don't know why, but I didn't. It was as if I just couldn't take it in." Loki, who knew very well how that felt, added a little more sugar to his tea and held his tongue.
"The mind can play very strange tricks," Thor spoke up, obviously still trying to make amends for not recognizing her primacy in this matter. He smiled suddenly. "I myself have very clear memories of our mother being with child before Loki was born, which of course I must have made up after I came to realize what mothers are supposed to look like at such a time."
As an effort to make Annie forgive him, the gesture could hardly have been more transparent, but it appeared to work. She smiled at him, and offered the biscuits again.